The dream began in 1972, when the U.S. Open was played at thePebble Beach Golf Links for the first time. Casey Boyns was akid, 16 years old, a part-time caddie at Pebble who played itdaily in the fading light of dusk. He was a strong player,unschooled but hugely talented. Now he is 44, a full-time caddieat Pebble Beach, still a good player, and the U.S. Open is in hisbackyard again. He seldom gets to play the course anymore. PebbleBeach is a moneymaking machine now, and sneaking onto it is partof its charming, unkempt but very distant past. Still, you cannotoverstate how intimately Boyns knows this course. He has workednearly 5,000 loops at Pebble, has witnessed well over a millionshots there and has tens of thousands of shots filed away in hismental logbook: what the ball did coming out of a particular lieor bouncing off a particular hillock or landing on a particularsection of green. Imagine how much he could help a player in theOpen. Better yet, imagine Casey playing in the Open--The Legend ofBagger Boyns. What if he contended? There would be bedlam. Thestudios would be packing trucks with scriptwriters and pointingthem north.

Most days he caddies in the morning and plays in the afternoon.On Mondays he sometimes takes a slide from looping, so that hecan play a round on fresh legs. His home links is the PacificGrove Golf Course, a muni with excellent bones a few miles northof Pebble Beach. But on Monday, May 22, Boyns did not play hishome course. He headed out of Pacific Grove, where he lives withhis wife and two children, and pointed his maroon Dodge Caravanwith the license plate GOLFNKC toward Santa Cruz 40 miles north,to the Pasatiempo Golf Club, a qualifying site for the 2000 U.S.Open.

Boyns was one of 90 golfers competing for six spots that day.(Nationally, there were 8,187 players in local qualifying eventscompeting for 569 spots.) Those six spots, you should know, arenot for places in the Open field; the only thing local qualifyingdoes is get a player into the sectional qualifying, the one-day,36-hole grindfest from which roughly one in nine players advancesto the national championship. It ain't easy, getting into a U.S.Open.

"I'm not feeling very confident," Boyns said the night before.He hadn't been playing well in the weeks before, and in nearlytwo dozen previous attempts he had never made it out of localqualifying. Also, he'd been working often and hard. Pebble Beachis always busy, but this year, with the U.S. Open coming,interest in the course has become feverish among the fancy-shoedbusinessmen, the guys who help Boyns pay his mortgage.

Boyns arrived at Pasatiempo 20 minutes before his 9:50 a.m. teetime, hit five chips, 20 putts, three bunker shots, and was off.That's all the preround preparation he needs. Boyns has his ownway of doing things. It is not the pro way.

But he is a pro, at least in the eyes of the U.S. GolfAssociation, at least for now. To the USGA, a golfer is either anamateur or a professional, or a professional seekingreinstatement as an amateur. Boyns is in that last little group.

In 1983, three years after graduating from Utah--his major was"leisure studies"--Boyns turned pro and went to Q school to gethis Tour card. His putting was lousy, and he missed qualifying by10 shots in the first stage. He entered two small-purse events inCalifornia, found he didn't enjoy playing for money and gotreinstated as an amateur by the USGA in 1985. In 1989 and '93,Boyns won the California State Amateur, a highly competitivematch-play event held annually at Pebble Beach. These wins arethe crowning achievements of his golf career. His name sharestrophy space with those of Mark O'Meara, Gene Littler, KenVenturi, Charlie Seaver (Tom's father) and Jack Neville, theamateur architect who helped design Pebble Beach. Casey's a hardman to beat at Pebble. He knows every blade of it.

In 1998 a friend recruited Boyns to be a teaching pro atcorporate golf outings. The job required Boyns once again to giveup his amateur status, but Boyns didn't mind. Since he was a proagain, and since he had two children to raise, Boyns decided toplay in the occasional professional event. His most revealingmoment as a pro golfer came in his first tournament: He stood onthe 1st tee in a Pepsi Tour mini-tour event at the old Del MonteGolf Course and was introduced as a former California StateAmateur champion. He looked down the 1st fairway, on a hole hehad played more than 100 times. Boyns stepped up to his ball,went into his backswing and hit a dead pull, out-of-bounds. Heteed up a second ball and hit another dead pull, out-of-bounds.Did the same thing with his third ball. He never finished thehole and withdrew from the medal competition.

Despite that start Boyns kept grinding. He has entered about adozen small tournaments over the past two years; in '99 he wonthe Santa Cruz Open and its $5,000 first-place prize. But he hasnever felt comfortable. "I don't know how to carry myself as apro, don't feel like a pro," Boyns says. His voice is pureNorthern California, flat and cool and unexcitable--just likeJohnny Miller's. "I like to play in shorts, carry a little bag. Ilike to wear my hair a little long. I don't like everyone lookingat me thinking, 'Hey, let's see how the pro plays the shot.' Ijust like to play and help people with their games. I'm acaddie." In late '99 he applied to the USGA to regain his amateurstatus. This time it's a minimum three-year wait.

His goal at Pasatiempo, a hilly gem designed by AlisterMackenzie, the architect of Augusta National, was to play evenpar or better and to enjoy the round, though he knew that playingit would take more than five hours. (Boyns is a fast player, afast walker, a fast driver, a little fidgety. He does everythingwith one extra movement, including his putting stroke.) The roundlasted 5 1/2 hours, but he enjoyed himself. He made 11 pars, fourbirdies, three bogeys. He shot 69. He was in. Suddenly the dreamwas a little closer to becoming reality.

Early the next morning Boyns was back at Pebble. In the caddieshack, a large cart barn, really, he saw his brother, Bucky. Hesees Bucky most every morning--same time, same place. Bucky andthe other loopers were all over Casey that morning,congratulating him on his round. Bucky, 58, is a jazz musicianand a surfer. He surfs every day, in 50[degree] water, in waves bigenough to snap your board and your neck. He feels about surfingalmost exactly the way Casey feels about golf.

Bucky and Casey are among the most senior caddies at Pebble,which means they get to go out with the first groups of the day.That morning Casey carried the bags of two insurance executives.They were nice men, decent players who were smart enough tolisten to their caddie. The insurance guys found Boyns to beexceedingly helpful. When one of them didn't have the right club,Boyns sprinted over with another one. He gave yardages and winddirections, read greens, found balls, made short-term weatherforecasts, passed along some Pebble Beach history and talked totheir golf balls at the right times. He greeted a ball bound fora trap with a cheerful "Bunka!" When a wedge shot sailedcomically in the wind, Boyns said, doing his best Price Is Rightimpression, "Come on down!" When a putt toured the circumferenceof the cup before dropping, Boyns yelled triumphantly, "Victorylap!" He was always on the move. He put on or took off his windshirt with every discernible temperature change, of which therewere many. He called one of the insurance men "Big Boy" and theother, who was managing his middling talent well, "Smart Guy."They paid Boyns more than double the going rate. He loves hisjob.

None of this is to suggest he is a disciple of Shivas Irons, thegolf pro in Michael Murphy's book, Golf in the Kingdom, a slimnovel whose mystical parallels between golf and life infect manyNorthern Californian golfers. Boyns does not see the golf-higherspirit connection. His method of instruction is to say, "Aim forthe eucalyptus tree and don't leave anything in the bag."

Twenty years ago Boyns worked at the Esalen Institute, the BigSur wellness center cofounded by Murphy, stapling sheet metal toroofs. In those days he was more interested in joining thebrotherhood of sheet-metal workers than the brotherhood oftouring pros. He dug Murphy's hangout, but the message of hisbook made no mark on him. What impressed him most were the nakedwomen walking along Esalen's beaches.

He took up golf as a boy, playing at Pacific Grove with hisfather, a barber who made some good investments in real estate.At one point Leonard Boyns tried to join the swanky MontereyPeninsula Country Club, but his application went nowhere."Somebody told him you couldn't join if tips were part of yourincome," Casey says, so he and his father kept playing P.G.,sometimes in under two hours, and Casey kept sneaking on atMonterey Peninsula, despite the many times he was caught. "I'dhear the security guy on his Cushman coming after me, and I'd runinto the woods, and he'd holler, 'Come out, I know you're inthere!'"

He's still most at home at the P.G. muni, where his 18-holerounds cost $12--if the kid at the counter bothers to punch hiscard. He had a game there the other day, paired with a couple oflocals, a guy with a gray ponytail named James and a woman new togolf named Inga. On the second hole Inga whiffed her tee shotthree times before hitting a 50-yard pop fly. Boyns did not shakehis head in disbelief and ask himself, How did I get stuck inthis group? He said, with sincerity, "Good shot. That's better."He loves golf, and golfers. He shot a 29 that day, six under par,on a short, windswept, duney back nine designed by Jack Nevillehimself. Boyns played with a narrow stance, a strong grip, a fastswing. He played a big cut. He wore beltless shorts, beat-upshoes, a T-shirt. He drove the 14th, a par-4, 356 yards, andholed his 10-foot putt for eagle. The man can play.

He was home by six. He lives with his wife, Sara, a lawyer, andtheir children, Marisa, 15, and Christopher, 9. They share acomfortable, modest house a short walk from the ocean. Dinner wasgrilled chicken and artichokes, and much of the conversation wasabout golf, in one way or another. Marisa told the story of hergirlfriend who broke up with her boyfriend because she thoughtshe could get Sergio Garcia to take her to the prom. (Didn'thappen.) Christopher sat wide-eyed as Casey talked about hisround at Pebble Beach with Tiger Woods at the 1994 CaliforniaState Amateur. ("Tiger, talking about my putting stroke, said,'It's kind of funny looking, but he sure does get the ball in thehole.'") Later, the conversation turned to what Casey would do ifhe qualified for the Open. Would he play as an amateur or aprofessional? "It seems like you love the game more when you playas an amateur," Sara said. Casey said that if he won, he wouldtake the prize money, $800,000. Too much money to pass up, hesaid. Any other finish, he'd play for the glory of having beenthere.

On Monday, June 5, Casey Boyns was one of 96 golfers playing atthe Lake Merced Golf and Country Club, outside San Francisco,competing in sectional qualifying. The top six finishers wouldadvance to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Tour players, like MarkCalcavecchia, were in the field, as were former Tour players,like Mac O'Grady, and possible future Tour players, like AndyMiller, Johnny's son. A tough crowd.

Boyns had a rough day and didn't qualify. As of Monday night, hewas looking for a bag to carry in the Open. He wants to be insidethe ropes, one way or the other. He's been dreaming about thatfor 28 years. He could help a player, no question about that. Heknows the course like he knows his own hands. Like he knows hisown dreams.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY TODD BIGELOW PEBBLE'S BAM-BAM Boyns is hard to beat at Pebble Beach--he won the California State Amateur there in 1989 and '93.COLOR PHOTO: TODD BIGELOW When Boyns talks about Pebble courses, smart golfers listen.COLOR PHOTO: BRAD MANGIN Boyns never felt comfortable as a pro--he likes to play in shorts.

Casey's Skinny On Pebble

1. Par-4, 381 yards The approach is uphill, although it doesn'tlook it. In the morning take one more club. In the afternoonwatch for a tailwind.

2. Par 4, 484 yards A par-5, no matter what the card says. If youplay it in 18 strokes over four rounds, you'll be gaining on thefield.

3. Par-4, 390 yards Pebble is not a typical U.S. Open course. Oncertain holes you have to be aggressive, and this is the first ofthem.

8. Par-4, 418 yards The greatest second shot in golf, accordingto Nicklaus. Be certain of the wind direction--remember what itwas doing on the sixth--or you will never share Nicklaus's lovefor this hole.

9. Par-4, 466 yards If you're going to miss the green, miss itinto the front left bunker. All other greenside shots arehorrors.

10. Par-4, 446 yards The steepest left-to-right sloping fairwayon the course. I believe you must play a fade off the tee, butTom Watson won here in '82 by drawing his drive. What can I say?

11. Par-4, 380 yards The green, even if it's rock-hard, will holdany shot because of the severe back-to-front slope. Think birdie.

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything